The Conundrums of Dining Alone in Hong Kong - Splitting and Sharing the Table

I don’t know how it is in other cultures, but venturing to a restaurant alone has never been a nerve-wrecking experience here in Hong Kong. Obviously, we don’t call it a transient city for nothing, for even on the microscopic level of dining, we Hongkongers are pretty much a speed-inclined pack who come, sit, eat, and leave out of biting necessity. Either we have but a pitiable amount of lunch time because of the afternoon meeting coming up; or we all finish work in different hours, rendering an impromptu dinner with friends quite a bit of a mish. Whatever reason it is, we have developed a culture of dining forlornly and quickly, about which I am not complaining at all – it’s all quite lovely actually, because HK has at the same time also become a, what I call, solitary-dining-friendly place. 

So I hear you ask, my dear readers, “where does awkwardness lie in this blog entry then?” Excellent question (* exudes air of authority of an all-nurturing educator *). Precisely because most waiters/ waitresses are hearty enough to take care of a frequent solitary dining person like me, they make a little effort to split the table for you.

The "Symbolic Gap"

Now, that’s where the discombobulating part is. So you went into a restaurant, found no available seats other than the table next to an already dining couple. The waiter/waitress then offered said seat and inquired if it’s much of an issue. You said no, of course. S/he brought you forward, as you comfortably sat down, displaying a polite-yet-forced smile to the intruded couple. Then, here it is, the waiter/waitress kindly detached your table from the couple’s, yet to a very minor extent, leaving a baffling feeble gap of 3cm.

What does that mean at all really…? The waiter/waitress appeared to be all winningly proud, thinking s/he has vacuumed the awkwardness into the gap, whereas I stared at it in utter bafflement. Is it meant to be an imaginary, symbolic partition, against which both parties would act like each other didn’t exist?

Well hello! I’m apparently invisible because of the 3cm gap between us. We’re SO convinced even though your spaghetti cabonara next to me looks and smells salivating.

Odd.

I hope at this point you don’t mistake me for a mean, sour and demanding customer, as in fact, the effort is all appreciated, thanks muchly. But in all honesty, it just creates every unnecessary feeling of abandonment that would otherwise not have conjured if not for said crack.

Throughout the meal the gap seemed to subtly shout “this guy doesn’t belong to the bigger group. Now, HE, is a loner.”

Thanks muchly.

The Table-sharing Embarrassment

Albeit merely symbolic, being "served" with a gap might actually be a fortunate treatment. Fact is, dining in this busy city can at times turn out to be a tricky social occasion. I call it a "social" occasion, because those are the times when we’re thrown into a table of complete strangers, with whom you are forced to cope throughout your meal.

Being a frequent lone diner ( such an awfully sad term – "lone diner" - Imagine a veiled spinster wearing all black sitting there sobbing with a little handkerchief wiping the corner of her eye), I have had more of such experience than I ever needed. While I proudly congratulated myself on the strong track of lone dining experience, it often took just one incident to shatter my confidence. Let me now share with you my most extreme table-sharing fiasco:

It was lunchtime in a Vietnamese restaurant, one that was as local and busy as its food was tasty. I, famished and dehydrated, was dying for the lemongrass pork-chop rice with fresh coconut juice. Eagerly I stepped into the hustle and bustle of the restaurant and was immediately asked by a high-pitched lady “HOW MANY OF YOU???”

“Oh, one, just me.”

“Okay this way lah handsome.” This is one thing I love about Hong Kong – we are never judged for dining alone with that oh-just-you-only-face.

Oh nelly. She brought me to a table of 6, around which were:

1.    An affectionate teenage couple shamelessly feeding each other

2.    Grandma and mum eating in silence and indifference to each other – the smell of post-argument air.

3.    Young dad in his early thirties and his boisterous, attention-seeking son jumping on the chair. (Single dad?? Or just busy working mum?), and

4.    Yes, me. Well hello!

Now, question: how to survive in such a situation?

a.    Run (but you were hungry and it was lunchtime in TST)

b.    Request another table (An obvious impossibility)

c.     Ask for take-away (refer to a.)

d.    Suck it up (Yes! Congratulations – you are in for a social challenge!)

But first of all, where should I look at? The table was round, which means you would be inevitably looking at someone and come off as creepily observing someone's ingestion process. So I decided to keep to my little space (1/7 of the already-tiny table) and stare at… the soy sauce bottle.

Then there came distractions. The couple’s unabashed PDA (public display of affections, just in case some of my readers are not acronym-shrewd) was overwhelming and jealousy-evoking (don’t judge!); the pervasive tension between grandma and mum sent me uncomfortable dread about a potential explosion of temper; the shrieking kid was a down-right nuisance and dad was useless curbing his little monkey despite fake and unavailing sternness – in a word, infuriating.

There you have - a buffet of emotions as appetizers. Yum.

It was challenging, I can tell you, to confront such a jambalaya of competing emotions on my own. Luckily it is the smartphone era we're living in now, meaning we can be easily companied by our phone(s). Here in the following are some tricks to deal with such an unfortunate occasion. Feel free to use and consider them my gifts for you. You are very much welcome.

1.    Take photos: Even if you are not phototaking-inclined, I suggest you to turn on the phone camera and take photos, nay, LOTS of photos of your food, so you would look like a smart and diligent social network user with lots of friends/followers dying to get a hold of your latest updates.

(difficulty 3/5 – mainly due to risk of seeming like a vacuous teenager)

2.    Make a phone call: Pretend something important is going on and your input is highly valued. Examples: stock buying/selling as you are an i-banker (have no idea what ibankers do really...) , love advice as friend is suicidal, crisis in office as you are the head of office, etc.  

(difficulty 4/5 – creatively demanding)

3.    Receive a phone call: Same as 2., yet with a heightened sense of emergency because they, not you, sought help.

(difficulty 8/5 – wholly because iphone’s signature ringtone is polyphonic and hence humanly impossible to imitate.)

Anyways, my meal was finished in haste, but that’s certainly quite an achievement don’t you think? Sounds like a shining spot on my résumé: Successfully coped with a tricky lunch with 6 strangers in conflicted emotional statuses.

Now I must revise the first sentence of this entry - Hong Kong is largely a friendly place for dining alone indeed, but sometimes things like table splitting and sharing do make me gasp and utter a fatigued "nooooo!"